Sooner or later the offshore Cascadia fault zone is going to unleash a monster earthquake and tsunami. When that day comes, you hope that coastal schools, fire stations and hospitals are located high enough so that they don't get washed away just when you really need them.

The North Coast Tourism Studio, offered by Travel Oregon in partnership with a local steering committee (representing 24 organizations and agencies), began with listening sessions held in spring, 2018, which guided the topics for a series of five workshops last fall and this winter.

Seventeen gray whales have stranded themselves along Washington's shorelines in 2019, and experts are looking for answers.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality denied a water quality certification for the proposed Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal and its feeder pipeline, the Pacific Connector pipeline, though the agency left the door open for the company to reapply.

A big rebound in the sea lion population along the West Coast in recent years has created a constant battle to wrangle the protected animals. They’re smart and fun to watch from a safe distance, but also noisy, smelly and proving to be a headache for some coastal marinas.

HAMILTON, Skagit County — Mayor Joan Cromley crossed over a backwater slough, chatting with a Seattle conservationist on a tour of her town, when a noise blared, shrill as a car alarm.

Then they mate and their babies eat the barnacle. Seriously.

SEATTLE - Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed several bills Wednesday designed to help the Pacific Northwest’s endangered orcas, measures that he said gave him hope the species might be saved.

Slow and steady wins the race — especially in sea star restoration. Following a devastating loss of sea star life from Alaska to Mexico due to wasting disease in 2013, the population is gently inching its way back upward.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — More California sea lions preying on imperiled salmon in the Columbia River below a hydroelectric project on the Oregon-Washington border are being killed under a revised policy, federal authorities said Friday.

Trees lining the path to Arcadia Beach slant back against the hillside as if permanently enduring invisible gale-force winds.

A salmon-farming operation will pay $332,000 in fines for releasing a quarter-million Atlantic salmon into the northern Puget Sound when one of its floating pens collapsed in August 2017.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Portland District is seeking public comment on the Federal Navigation Channel Operations and Maintenance Dredging and Dredged Material Placement draft Environmental Assessment (EA) for Skamokawa Creek, Westport Slough, Old Mouth Cowlitz River and Upstream Entrance to Oregon Slough.

New rules dictate non-retention until July 15

Pacific Northwesterners are undeniably fond of their endangered resident killer whales. Many locals are also fans of salmon fishing, a hobby that sustains charter fishing fleets in coastal harbors from Neah Bay, Washington, to Brookings, Oregon.

OCEAN SHORES, Wash. - Another dead gray whale has been found washed up on the beach - this time on the Washington coast at Ocean Shores.

Dynamic revetment — the placement of cobble rock along coastal shorelines to protect them from erosion — is the official “preferred choice” to stave off the shoreline erosion that has been gobbling up property and houses in the North Cove area for decades.

CANNON BEACH — A boy picked up a chunk of stone and started methodically smashing barnacles in the protected marine garden at Haystack Rock.

After decades of planning and administrative work, the Birch Bay beach restoration project known as the berm is set to receive its final permit – a shoreline substantial development permit from Whatcom County.

(CN) – The first in a series of bills intended to help prevent the extinction of Southern Resident killer whales is headed to the desk of Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee. The measure, which Inslee requested, would protect habitat for the Chinook salmon the whales eat.

From Carla Stehr’s viewpoint, the ocean is very small. Tiny. Microscopic, in fact. It’s also a wondrous, liquid world teeming with all sizes of life that lends itself to all kinds of artistic interpretation.

My Postdoctoral research has focused on understanding the causes and consequences of public misunderstanding about shark fisheries management. While scientists overwhelmingly support sustainable fisheries management as a solution to shark overfishing, many concerned citizens and conservation activists prefer total bans on all shark fishing and trade. Some go so far as to (wrongly) claim that sustainable shark fisheries cannot exist even in theory and do not exist in practice anywhere in the world, and that bans are the only possible solution.

The tribes in the Pacific Northwest are leaders in climate adaptation and have mounted multifaceted responses to the threats they face.

Crude oil exports from Canada’s Port of Vancouver shot up by at least 67 percent last year, sending more tankers through critical habitat for orcas on both sides of the Washington-British Columbia border.

Puget Sound, Washington - Marco Hatch, a Coastal Salish scholar, talks about the importance of bringing indigenous knowledge to Western research — and what science loses when we don't.

SALEM (AP) — Oregon state lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a permanent offshore oil drilling ban as the Trump administration forges ahead with a plan that could open up the Pacific coast for petroleum exploration and extraction.

When the herring finally disappear, we’ll have only ourselves to blame.

SEATTLE—The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is taking a fresh look at whether new fishing restrictions are needed to help prevent the extinction of endangered southern resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound.

Ocean conditions are improving for salmon entering the ocean this year, several years after The Blob, an unusually warm water event that began forming in 2014, scientists announced Friday.

“They are delicious when steamed open and dipped in hot butter,” according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. They’re also disappearing, according to scientists who've studied them from Alaska to California.

This is the first in a series of stories about the environment brought by the News Guard from Lincoln City, Oregon.

From rising sea levels and crop failures to dying forests and fish, Washington state is struggling